At the very outset, what makes the HD 4770 special is that it is the world's first card manufactured on a 40nm process. This means that the card runs on lesser power and is cheaper to manufacture.

We received an HD 4770 straight from ATI and it is smaller than both the HD 4830 and the HD 4850. It has a silent-running fan over the core and copper pipes built into the card. The card still requires an additional power input but heating and noise was hardly an issue. Like the ATI cards we reviewed before, the HD 4770 also has dual DVI ports and a single Video-Out port.

When we began our performance tests we hit a road-block thanks to the beta drivers that ATI had provided us. As a result enabling anti-aliasing (M) in our benchmark games in DirectX 10.1 resulted in the games crashing. So we ran the card through our tests with M enabled under DirectX 9 and no M under DirectX 10.1.

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In 3D Mark '06 the card produced a score of 12,718, less than 1,000 marks below the HD 4850. In 3D Mark Vantage (High and Performance presets), the card managed 4,714 and 7,948 marks, less than 500 marks away from the HD 4850. This performance was carried forward even in the gaming benchmarks where the card either fell only slightly short from the HD 4850 or even (especially in Far Cry 2).

The HD 4770 is first glance it looks strange, because it is a higher price-tag than what the HD 4850 commands. However, our suggestion to prospective buyers is this: Unless you are going to pick up the HD 4850, wait for two months because it is highly probable that this price will drop. And through its performance, the HD 4770 has proved that the wait will be worth it.